Diagrama de Hilos

Introduction

The 1858 Government of India Act and Queen’s Proclamation produced by Derby’s

Conservative government represented a Tory refashioning of Britain’s Indian Empire following the Indian Revolt. In replacing the East India Company with Crown rule, they constituted an imperial framework which acknowledged India’s internal differences and separation from Britain by stating its determination to protect and engage its national institutions and customs. This chapter explores how Disraeli’s and Ellenborough’s legislative engagement and disagreement on the Act represented disparate attempts to refashion Indian empire upon tory principles. Next, it is shown that their sentiments defined Lord Stanley’s authored Queen’s Proclamation in December 1858. It is argued that the Proclamation was a distinctly conservative document. It constituted British Indian Empire and a wider imperial identity on a vertical relationship between the Crown and a socially hierarchical and culturally divided population of India. It challenged liberal civilizing ambitions by establishing a collaborative imperial framework based upon Britain’s reciprocal loyalty and obligation with disparate princely, propertied, and ethnic and cultural groups in India.

Government of India Act (1858)

The conservative Government of India Act (1858) was the product of substantial partisan amendment and debate concerning the re-establishment of the British Indian Empire following

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the Revolt.141 _{It represented a Conservative opportunity to reintroduce and succeed upon the}

Whig’s failed bill earlier that year which was opposed by Radicals and Conservative. Their opposition reflected the bill’s proposal to consolidate Indian authority in a Secretary of State and a small executive council. With the Whig government’s collapse due to Common’s non-

confidence, Disraeli, now Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader in the House of Commons, introduced the Conservative attempt to refashion Indian empire through a conciliation of tory and radical principles. It inscribed Crown rule over India with a Secretary of State for India and an executive Indian Council that would be responsible for appointing and supervising a

Governor General and a newly named Indian Civil Service. In contrast to the earlier bill,

Disraeli’s defined an expanded and representative Council which attempted to conciliate British and “Indian” opinion.

In the bill’s first reading in March 1858, Disraeli introduced the Government’s plans for a new eighteen member Indian Council composed of nine crown appointments and nine elected officials. Beyond an attempt to appeal to the democratic instincts of Radical MPs, this scheme was consistent with Disraeli’s views on “Tory democracy” and national engagement with

empire. With regards to the appointments, it proposed that one member would be an official with at least five years of experience with native princes, while eight would be officials from

government and military service in the local Presidencies.142 The council’s elective element was

141 _{For a summary of the 1858 Government of India Act and Queen’s Proclamation see Metcalf & Metcalf, A}

Concise History of India, 102-104.

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the bill’s most criticized element in parliament and the press. Questioned for its constitutionality and practicality, the proposal called for the election of nine councilors to six year terms. These would include four elected from a constituency of men with Indian experience and Indian residence of at least fifteen years, and five from Britain’s principal seats of industry: London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Belfast.143 Following substantial amendment representing Conservative and Radical opposition to this scheme, the final Act would construct a titled

Council of India with fifteen lifetime members who had at least ten years of experience in India. Ellenborough was thoroughly engaged in the composition of the 1858 Act, including opposition to Disraeli’s council experiment. As argued in the previous chapter, Ellenborough was a career advocate for Crown rule and local representation in Indian governance. He maintained that the Crown’s status and authority would promote financial economy over a duplicative double government, and secure the trust and affection of India’s princes and people towards British paramountcy. In July 1858 to the House of Lords, he proposed that the

overriding objective of the new Indian government bill was to secure its acceptance of the country’s population. Therefore, he could see no better way than through the Queen’s personal protection of the people’s religion and property rights.144 _{With regard to the new Indian council,}

Ellenborough was influential in proposing a responsible advisory institution which represented the official experiences of the local Indian presidencies. He argued that the need of

143 _{Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 3}rd _{ser., vol. 149, 26 Mar. 1858, cols. 825-827.} 144 _{Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 3}rd _{ser., vol. 151, 15 Jul. 1858, col. 78.}

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representation from across the Subcontinent reflected the differences between the Presidencies, which he compared to differing European states. Regarding the proposed council’s electoral component, he argued that it was a dangerous proposition which, if enacted, could seriously undermine the quality of governance in India. This reflected his consistent opposition to

metropolitan interference with India’s government, and a latent class favoritism towards men of property in the political and administrative positions of Indian governance. Before Disraeli’s introduction of the Bill, he argued to Stanley that an elected council member would alert Indians to the danger of further state interference with religion.145 To Derby, he communicated that any election for the Indian Council could lead to partisan expressions on issues relating to education and proselytism which would cause serious unrest in India.146

Ellenborough’s second point of contention with the Council’s representative element, especially from the chief urban and industrial towns, was the introduction of the non-gentry into positions of political and administrative patronage. To Derby, he contended that the lack of a “reliable landlord body” in these towns would leave considerable patronage to the “sons of tailors and other shopkeepers” who would prove to be “…men…very inferior to the English gentlemen who have…led our armies.” This sentiment also informed an opposition to competitive examinations for the new Indian Civil Service. Again to Derby, he considered competitive examinations a democratic measure which, if enacted, “…must lower the character

145 _{Ellenborough to Stanley, 07 Mar. 1858, Pro 30/12/09, fol. 655, EP, NA.} 146 _{Ellenborough to Derby, 08 Apr. 1858, Pro 30/12/09, fol. 2241, EP, NA.}

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of the Public Service-in which high feelings of honor are of far more value than high educational attainment…”147 _{In the Lords, Ellenborough lamented that competitive examinations might lead}

to the sons of grocers and tailors taking spots away from the sons of gentry who could not afford the costs of education. He considered the proposal an “unasked for act of homage to democracy,” which would question British moral superiority in India, and challenge the principle that “the higher a man’s position in life the greater his consideration of the people under him.”148 _This

sentiment reflected similar concerns that Britain had subdued India’s native gentry and curtailed their political participation as intermediaries. He saw the British gentry as expressly qualified, from their paternal positions of local authority, to govern in the national interests of the local people. Although disagreeing on the Indian council’s composition, Disraeli and Ellenborough shared a basic conviction that Britain had to govern India with an acknowledgement of, respect for, and engagement with its diverse local and prescriptive interests.

Stanley’s 1858 Queen’s Proclamation was an attempt to conciliate India’s political, propertied, and religious interests to the British Empire. It gave the Crown’s guarantee that its Indian government would refrain from state annexation, undermining property right, confiscating titles, and discriminating against or interfering with the people’s religious beliefs. Just like Disraeli and Ellenborough, Stanley argued for British culpability for the Indian Revolt. He also chastised Canning’s continued instigation of the conflict. The Proclamation represented his

147 _{Ellenborough to Derby, 03 Mar. 1858, Pro 30/12/09, fols. 2079-2082, EP, NA.} 148 _{Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 3rd ser., vol. 151, 15 Jul. 1858, col. 1681.}

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acknowledgement that Britain had failed to respect and engage India’s propertied, religious, and political interests. Stanley joined Ellenborough’s condemnation of Canning’s Oudh

Proclamation. In the Commons, he contended against the ‘arbitrary’ and ‘indiscriminate’ nature of the proclamation, and affirmed the local taluqdar’s proprietary land rights against the notion that confiscation was legal because all land in India belonged to the Government.149 As the first Secretary of State for India, he told Canning that the Government could not retract

Ellenborough’s earlier condemnation as it seemed correct that compulsory land sales in Oudh did alienate the people.150 In December 1858, Disraeli praised Stanley’s comments to graduating cadets at the Royal Military College on avoiding prejudice and respecting local custom in India.151 In this speech, he emphasized past British error and harm for not recognizing the necessity of having a knowledge of and empathy for the local population:

Examine native habits, native ideas, native character; do it in a spirit of fairness, and you will gain at least this…that you will avoid that ignorant and unwise contempt for all this is Asiatic, which, political and personally, does Englishmen so much harm in the East.152

To Canning on the details of the Queen’s Proclamation, Stanley recognized that past Indian discontent was largely instigated by Britain not respecting religious neutrality.153 _{In a speech in}

149 _{Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 3}rd _{ser., vol. 150, 17 May 1858, col. 750.} 150 _{Stanley to Canning, 19 Nov. 1858, Mss Eur. Photo Eur. 477/22, BL, AAS.}

151 _{Disraeli to Stanley, 30 Dec. 1858, in Benjamin Disraeli Letters, vol. VII, ed. M.G. Wiebe (Toronto: University of}

Toronto Press, 1982) 307-308.

152 _{Times, 11 Dec 1858, p. 8.}

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early 1859 to the Commons, he repudiated territorial annexation “which…has undoubtedly in a great degree been the cause of the present disaster” as a component of future British policy.154

The Queen’s Proclamation endeavored to rectify British errors on territorial annexation, property settlement, and religious interference. To India’s princes and landowners, the document assured that all the previous treaties made with the Company would be honored and that

ancestral claims would be respected. Moreover, it pledged that the Government had no further ambition towards territorial expansion, and local status, rights, and customs would be

incorporated within a collaborative system supporting peace and good governance in India: We desire no extension of our present territorial processions; and while we will permit no aggression upon our dominions or our rights to be attempted with

impunity, we shall sanction no encroachment on those of others. We shall respect the rights, dignity, and honour of native princes as our own, and we desire that they, as well as our own subjects, should enjoy that prosperity and that social advancement which can only be secured by internal peace and good government.155

Towards the landowners, the Proclamation ensured that the Government would honestly consider the title and right of ancestral proprietorship:

We know and respect the feelings of attachment with which the natives of India regard the lands inherited by them from their ancestors and we desire to protect them in all rights connected there with, subject to the equitable demands of the State; and we will that generally, in framing and administering the law due regard to be paid to the ancient rights, usages, and customs of India.156

154 _{Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 3}rd _{ser., 14 Feb. 1859, cols. 358, 370.} 155 _{The Times, 12 Jun. 1858, p. 7.}

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With regards to the State’s relationship with the people’s religion, it stated that the Government, despite its preference, would maintain a strict principle of non-interference:

Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity and acknowledged with gratitude the solace of religion, we disclaim alike the right and the desire to impose our convictions on any of our subjects. We declare it to be in our royal will and pleasure that none to be in anywise favoured, none molested or disquieted by reason of their religious faith or observances, but that all should enjoy the equal and

impartial protection of the law, and we strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority under us that they abstain from all interference with the religious belief or worship of any of our subjects, on pain of our highest displeasure.157

Next, the Proclamation reiterated a commitment made in the 1833 Indian Act towards the state’s employment of the local people. It asserted that natives, whatever their race or creed, should “…be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service the duties of which they may be qualified, by their education, ability, and integrity duly to discharge.”158 _{Lastly, it offered}

clemency and peace to the rebels defeated by superior British force in the field, excluding those who committed murder or knowingly harbored those who murdered British subjects. To all others “in arms against the government, we hereby promise unconditional pardon, amnesty, and oblivion of all offenses against ourselves, our crown, and dignity, on their return to their homes and peaceful pursuits.”159

157 _Ibid.

158 _{Times, 12 Jun. 1858, p. 7.} 159 _Ibid.

110 Section Conclusion

The 1858 Government of India Act and Queen’s Proclamation represented a British conservative intellectual and political reformation of Indian Empire which remained influential until later in the nineteenth century. These documents represented a concerted conservative effort to challenge and supplant the universal and centralizing principles of liberal imperialism in India. Primarily, they represented Ellenborough’s and Disraeli’s coherent Tory argument that British culpability for the Indian Revolt was due to liberalism’s intentional destruction of the country’s political, propertied, and religious institutions. In response, the Act and Proclamation prescribed the Crown’s rule and protection over these national institutions. It also established a framework by which these institutions could collaborate with empire through demonstrating a reciprocal loyalty and obligation to imperial authority. For Ellenborough, Crown rule eliminated the inefficiencies of double government, and provided historical and political continuity to the country’s ruling elite and mass population. To Disraeli and the Young England imagination, the Whigs promulgation of liberal reasoned progress informed the Indian government’s deliberate destruction of princely authority, property confiscation and disenfranchisement, and religious custom. In response, the Queen’s Proclamation established a strong monarchy to protect India’s distinctive nationalities, and promote the feudal principles of noble obligation, expansive social privileges, and religious reverence. Disraeli’s introduction of the Royal Titles Act in 1876, which assented to Queen Victoria’s request to become the Empress of India, was a further testament to

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his imaginative inclination and action towards conciliating India’s unique historical and political traditions to the British Empire.

Lastly, the Queen’s Proclamation established an imperial framework and identity which informed future conservative engagement and collaboration in India. It constituted an alternative to predominant European standards in assessing political, social, and racial characteristics, by prioritizing a polity’s, groups’, and individual’s belonging to India’s particular local and historical environment. Later in the nineteenth century, this conception of belonging informed British conservative collaboration with accepted political and social elites that were believed to represent the natural leaders of India’s diverse society. For the latter, this framework allowed them to protect local autonomy and authority against imperialist and nationalist interference by espousing a vertical loyalty and obligation to the Crown.

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